Newcastle United vs Manchester City match banter!

Hello, good afternoon and welcome to our latest “match banter” feature, this time for the game against the only club to be named after a Gay anthem, Man City.

Despite our recent good form, it will undoubtedly be a very stiff test for the boys in black and white as we continue our quest for the holy grail of Champions League football next season against the prospective Champions. Still, we comfortably disposed of resurgent, FA Cup winning Champions League finalists, Chelsea, thanks to Papiss Cisse and his wondergoals. Here’s hoping we can do it once more against moneybags Man City!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Magpies’ Silver Supremo, Alan Pardiola, for making my job slightly easier for this post by naming his team yesterday, the same one as last time against Chelsea. As a kind of addendum to the “What the managers say” section of my colleague Hugh’s excellent match preview for this site, here’s what a confident and bullish Pardew had to say:

“It’ll be the same team that plays Man City. I’m not hiding that from Man City – they can know our team – and they’ve got to beat us.”

Continuing, he also said of the forthcoming game:

“It isn’t a season-defining 90 minutes, as our season’s been magnificent, but what it will be is a real test for us in terms of playing a team going for the title.”

“We’re going for fourth place and that Chelsea game was about setting up this game. We couldn’t have done any better – it was a great performance.

“Forget about Papiss’s two goals, which were special, it was a brilliant performance.

“Even without the goals, we’d have got a 0-0. We tied them up. We did that part of the job and I’m immensely proud of the players.”

Looking back at our last game against City, a 3-1 defeat, he went on:

“We really put in a great effort, but I thought we were a little distance away from them. I think it’ll be a lot closer this time.”

So anyway, thanks Alan, I’ll just paste in the team from the Chelsea game below.

In conclusion, I will just remind you that as usual, we will also be posting match highlights shortly after the game has concluded, as well as a match report, and also a video of the full match if / when one becomes available, which only leaves it for me to say:

Pardiola sounds like he’s going to keep it tight & hope its close full the last 20 minutes. Gary Neville gave an insightful view if the way City have set up – to blitz us hope to build a lead then bring on the likes is De Jong. Think Tiote needs to have another blinder & get on top of Toure.

Exactly, maze. It’s tough to watch but as the game goes on City will leave massive space in the back. Also, they’ve got a gang of players who have made over 30 appearances and Silva, in particular, tends to tire as matches go on.

Give him time, Jimbob. In any case, I’ll take that City started their more defensive pair of fullbacks because they worry about HBA, Ba, Jonas and Santon. Wouldn’t be surprised if Kolarov’s one of the players they put on at some point.

I agree, Jimbob. Clichy is definitely their starting LB. He’s quality. But if they were confident of getting at us and putting this away, they could have gone with the more attacking option of Kolarov. But Mancini knew Benny would be in behind him all day.

I don’t disagree, Jimbob but in the first half and the beginning of the second, everything we did to threaten them went through our midfield. The lumping & hoping that started when Shola went on was, in my opinion, never going to work.

Have to agree to disagree, Jim. Possession had gotten back to 50-50 before we took HBA off. Not saying we camped out in their half but we did string some passes together. We may have trended one way but once we’ve got Shola, Ba and Cisse on we’re obviously one dimensional.

Tunyc, it’s just the team we’re playing mate. Personally it wasn’t us at our fluid best, but we were up against a very good team. I think tactically we set up like we did vs Man Utd, but it didn’t fall for us today. City are at a different level.

Agreed-and I do appreciate that we were actually able to hope for a result against the title favorites on the next-to-last weekend of the season. The one thing I’d disagree about is the “different level.” They’ve got a better squad than us, but they are beatable for us now. That was a quality stop from Hart on HBA and if that goes the game is very different. I’d describe more as “we’re not quite there yet.”

I really hope the lads are up to finish the season showing what they’re really about. I’d love to see us thrash Everton.

Good game of football, too bad we could’nt get the win.
Another game where everyone contributed and gave their all, one could see the heavy legs by the latter part of the second half.
Dont know what the position permutations are but a successful enough season, even if we end up sixth.
This season’s successes may have instilled a sense of
“we can compete in the top level” of football and a combination of holding onto who we have and some quality defenders brought in……
Sky’s the limit !

Well Man.U. leading Swansea 2-0 @ 1/2 time and for all you closet Sunderland fans, they are down 2-1 to Fulham.
Both good games!
Have to say we in the US are spoiled by the number of games available on tv, with about half the EPL games shown.
Not to mention Seria A, La Liga, the French, Dutch and Bundisliga.
Then theres the Argentine and Basilian games, just too much, making life difficult as to which game to watch,
Ah well!

“So, we need to win and we need either an Arsenal loss or Spurs not to win. There is still hope of Champions League”

A. I dont think we’ll finish third or fourth
B. I dont really think we need CL football at this stage in our development
3. Rather play in a tournament we could progress in, than one we’d probably lose out before Christmas.
4. It is said CL football is the only “carrot” which could keep the top players here but I think Europa level is a pretty high standard which would test us considerably. In addition a decent run could help us re establish a UEFA coeficient ranking which, sadly, we no longer have :(